Court 'did not have to convict ranter'

Magistrates were entitled not to convict an "ardent nationalist" who for two years launched into "Alf Garnett" rants over the phone to his MP about asylum seekers and immigrants, the High Court ruled yesterday.

Magistrates were entitled not to convict an "ardent nationalist" who for two years launched into "Alf Garnett" rants over the phone to his MP about asylum seekers and immigrants, the High Court ruled yesterday.

Two judges said Leicester magistrates had been placed in "a dilemma", but were entitled to decide that, although Leslie George Collins's remarks were offensive, they were not "grossly offensive" under telecom laws.

Lord Justice Sedley, sitting with Mr Justice Mitting, warned that Collins's references to "wogs, Pakis and black bastards" might well have been grossly offensive if those who heard the calls had been from an ethnic minority.

Lord Justice Sedley said: "The respondent (Collins) had no idea, and evidently did not care, whether the person he was addressing or who would pick up his recorded message would be personally offended - grossly offended - by his abusive and intemperate language."

The judges were dismissing a bid by the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) to have Collins convicted.

During a recent hearing which led to the ruling, the judges were told that 60-year-old Collins's rantings were like those of Alf Garnett, the TV bigot from Till Death Us Do Part.

John Lloyd- Jones, appearing for the DPP, argued there was no place for Alf Garnett- style tirades in today's multicultural Britain.

He described how David Taylor, Labour MP for Leicestershire North West, and three of his office staff were subjected to a two-year stream of calls, between 2002 and 2004, full of expletives from Collins.

But Leicester magistrates refused to convict Collins under the 1984 Telecommunications Act for making phone calls of a grossly offensive, obscene or menacing character.

At the High Court appeal hearing, Esther Harrison, appearing for Collins, said he had worked all his life but now received disability benefits for a hand injury.

He was "a bluntspeaking person but not a racist" and his complaints were about the way the country was governed.